Writing anything helps

Making sense, embracing change

When natural disasters strike, I always feel for those who lose homes, possessions, family members, pets, or things that hold memories near and dear to them.

That’s my first thought.

Why do they continue to live in an area subject to those disasters? Why don’t they move to a place where that won’t predictably happen again?

That’s the second thought, usually but not always.

Who knows if they will ever be able to rebuild? But if I know people, they will carry on and find a new way to live and this will become a memory. A lesson. Somehow, a gift.

That’s the third thought and it always comes too soon.

Tragedy takes time. Unfortunately, in this digital age of instant info, we don’t take the time to process, digest, comprehend, and then move through the feelings that come with losing your home, your memories, your community, or your life in some cases - where one is forced to start over entirely.

As I type this letter to you in an attempt to take the smallest of steps toward healing and making sense of the incomprehensible (48 hours in)… my first, second, and third thoughts are oddly the same: my city is being destroyed by a natural disaster.

When I moved to a city named “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula” (translated to '“The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula") I had only ever heard it called LA or Los Angeles. The name I always hear in my head is ‘City of Angeles’ because I believe this to be true. There are so many Angels in this sprawling paved metropolis among 21 million humans.

My life here began in 1997 and shortly after my arrival, a thing called El Nino made it rain for 45 days in a row. I thought I had made a mistake. Did I move to the wrong LA? The sky wouldn’t stop crying. 28 years to the month here I sit, in my new home in Santa Monica, just 6 blocks from the corner of the evacuation zone at 26th and Cloverfield. A zone where over 50,000 Angelenos… have had to flee their homes.

Why? Well, you know. But the reason why we read these things is to get perspective from people who are there… so I will share for a few more paragraphs for those of you who may know someone who lives here but isn’t as fortunate as I in this trying time.

TUESDAY 10:34 am I heard of a fire in the Palisades and could see it from where I am currently living, on the hillside just East of the Getty Center off the 405 in the Santa Monica Mountains that separate West LA from the Valley and all points North.

FIRE: 0% contained

The fire was 200 acres in size and the winds were between 75-100 miles per hour.

TUESDAY 10:00 pm I had packed up my van with all my things and watched the orange sky for two hours as the entirety of the hillside called Pacific Palisades was being devoured by flames. I thought of leaving but I waited. The winds meanwhile were knocking down fences, tearing up trees, and fanning the flames of 3 other fires while the cute little town of Alta Dena was also being obliterated.

FIRE: 0% contained

WEDNESDAY 7:33 am I woke to turn on the news from my computer to hear the Palisades fire had grown to 4000 acres in size. Looking at the map I could see several of my friends had lost it all. They wouldn’t get the call until midday.

FIRE: 0% contained

WEDNESDAY 11:59 pm I was back in bed with a plan to drive to the desert to breathe cleaner air and get out of what will be a severely taxed area in resources and city services. I don’t think they need me here right now and plan to come back when the fires are contained and the smoke has cleared.

I also saw some photos and videos of the fires as my buddy was driving on evacuation notice from a home where I had just been his guest a few times last month near the Chinese Theatre / Hollywood and Highland.

You can go online and see Runyon Canyon, Alta Dena, Palisades, and the devastation. That is not what this letter to you is about. I am just trying to make sense of my experience and let you know I am ok as are all the ones I know well enough to call friends. They all got out with passports, people, pets, pills, paperwork, and their lives.

Make no mistake, this is a wind event. 100-mile-per-hour winds are normally seen in a hurricane zone. I had never experienced that kind of force in the air before. Transformers were exploding in the neighborhood and tree branches in the streets and yards across the city as 1.5 million people were still without power, including my old city of Venice where I lived for 21 years.

WIND + HILLSIDE of dry brush + FIRE = where we are today.

I believe in the power of prayer, the intention of wishing others well, and the objective to put people you will never meet or know in your consciousness in hopes that somehow their story will be a less painful experience. I believe it works, even when the outcomes seem devastatingly negative and hopeless.

LA will come back. It always does. The humans here are resilient and we will see clear skies again. In the meantime, check in and pray if you pray and care if you care, but remember in a few weeks, this will not be in the headlines, and the world will move on to the next crisis and focus on one of the 57 wars that are being waged or who is running things into the ground next.

We don’t have to feel powerless. We can BE powerless over people, places, and things, but we don’t have to FEEL powerless. Feel those feelings my friends and give space to those who are suffering. But remember, you have a choice about how you react and act out on your feelings and it can be healthy and positive. It could be walking away from a conversation. Maybe you turn off the news. Maybe you contribute to a GoFundMe Me and that is that. But you don’t have to be a victim and you don’t have to shout negative feelings into the void. You get to choose your adventure.

That is my fourth thought when life gives me a difficult challenge. How do I want to react to this circumstance?

I was forced out of my home in October. It didn’t burn down but I didn’t want to move either. I had 6 months to prepare. I didn’t ‘lose everything’ in a fire. But I was forced by nature to leave my community, to get rid of just about everything I owned, and to start a new life elsewhere.

Today is the 9th day of a new year on the calendar and before the fires that started burning a few days ago… my face hurt from smiling. Smiling because I am powerless over life’s circumstances, but I am choosing to make the most of it and my future has never been brighter.

My hope for you, my friends here, and anyone who is dealing with death, loss, tragedy, or devastation is that they too choose to feel their feelings fully and remember, that tomorrow is a new day. And with that new day, they can be in the world but not of the world. They can choose their adventure regardless of the circumstances dealt to them. And the nature of things is we rise or we fall. I am surrounded by Angels in a City that, in my humble experience, is filled with people who tend to rise from the ashes. Because those of us here made it… from the ashes of a past to build something new.

Now more than ever.

Mother Nature is undefeated. But I will never let life defeat me again. LFG.

I love LA. I love you. Be kind to each other.